Now, don’t get me wrong…of course I love my beautiful daughters. Of course I am in wonder and awe at the achievements of their young lives.

However, there is another Me.

The Other Me likes getting dressed in nice ironed clothes that match, putting on makeup and doing things like having conversations in tones other than ‘cutesy wutesy’. The Other Me was lucky enough to find a wonderful man who married me and enjoys doing many of the things the Other Me likes doing. Some of these things include: reading, creative writing, cooking, listening to music, photography, studying/discussing theology, and doing various crafts. The Other Me is organised and would never be caught without her Filofax (the one she spent ages choosing to reflect her personality). The Other Me enjoys having dinner in restaurants and going to the movies. The Other Me loves to be able to soak in the atmosphere in church and pray quietly with her eyes closed. The Other Me can hold a conversation about current events which doesn’t include topics like ‘who pulled whose hair’ and ‘how much so-and-so ate today’. The Other Me is ON TIME!

Both me and the Other Me enjoy reading blogs and I have found myself saying a little too frequently, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting. I wish I could do that.’ One of these interesting things I came across on one of those blogs is a reading challenge. Specifically, a Bible reading challenge. I did a little searching around the dot com and there are several versions of the Bible Reading Challenge. Some give you a schedule of chapters to read. Some give you a time frame in which to read the bible.

The one that I have decided to do is: Read the bible for 30 minutes per day and see how long it takes to get through the entire book.

So, today starts my Bible Reading Challenge.

I will post my progress on here and any thoughts I encounter along the way.

If you would like to join me in this challenge, please let me know in the comments. It would be great to have others to share this with!

Many of you may have studied Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. For those who haven’t- here is a short summary (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Imagine prisoners who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their arms and legs immovable because of chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of various animals, plants, and other things are moved. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. Behind this cave there is a well-used road, and upon this road people are walking and talking and generally making noise, which echoes off of the wall. The prisoners, then, believe that these noises are coming directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner’s chains break, and he is able to get up and walk about (a process which takes some time, as he has never done it before). Eventually he will be compelled to explore; he walks up and out of the cave, whereby he is instantly blinded by the sun. He turns then to the shadows on the floor, in the lakes, slowly working his way out of his deluded mind, and he is eventually able to glimpse the sun. In time, he would learn to see it as the object that provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

(This part of the allegory, incidentally, closely relates to Plato’s metaphor of the sun which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.)

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free his fellow prisoners, but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner’s eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. He might stumble, Plato asserts, and the prisoners would conclude that his experience had ruined him. He would not be able to identify the shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight. (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

Would you say this applies to our current way of looking at education? Any other thoughts on what it applies to in our current society?

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